store when the business of the court is at an end. It is not necessary that either county or borough magistrates should be learned in the law. They make no pretense to such learning. For each petty sessional division, and for each borough, there is a magistrate's clerk, who is always a lawyer of high stand ing; almost invariably of the solicitor's branch of the profession. When the magis trates are assembled in '" ...y session, they sit at a long desk r-.'. _a above the level of the court room. The chairman, who is the mouthpiece of the court, occupies the centre position, and immediately below the chair man sits the magistrates' clerk, who is con stantly in communication with the bench, and who retires to the magistrate's room with the bench when any legal point has to be determined. As many as ten or twelve magistrates attend petty sessions. Three form a court, and would do as well as a score; but petty sessions serve as a pleasant reunion, and as most English country gen tlemen are not overburdened with business, there is usually a full attendance. The court assembles at ten o'clock. In a divi sion in which there is a large population, it is often in session until two or three o'clock in the afternoon. Except in cases of more than usual grav ity, the divisional superintendent of con stabulary acts as the prosecuting officer and marshals the evidence for the police, A petty sessional division is a part of the hundred into which English counties are still divided for the administration of crimi nal justice, and of the licensing laws. Petty sessions is the court for the division; quar ter sessions is the court for the hundred. The police force of the whole county is under the command of the chief constable. Superintendents are in charge of the con stabulary in the petty sessional divisions. At every village in the petty sessional divi sion, there is stationed a constable. He lives in a house belonging to the county, to which
are attached two or three cells for the deten tion of prisoners. When the sessions are several days off, a man who is arrested is taken before the nearest resident magistrate within twenty-four hours of his arrest. He is marched, handcuffed by the constable, to the home of the magistrate, who hears only sufficient evidence to justify a remand to petty sessions. Unless the accused can find bail he is held in custody until the sessions. By far the greater majority of cases which come before petty sessions are under the highway laws, the game laws, the licensing laws, the poor laws, and the elementary edu cation laws. All these cases are disposed of summarily. The charges under the licensing laws, the highway laws and the game laws are mostly preferred by the police; and in all these cases the superintendent of police, who sits at the table with the magistrates' clerk, acts as public prosecutor. The most common offenses under the licensing laws are those of selling intoxicants to people who are drunk, or of selling after closing hours or during closed hours on Sunday. All over rural England, the hours of closing public houses are uniform; and both in the urban and rural districts public houses are closed on Sunday during the hours of church service. Exceptions are made in the case of bona-fide travellers, and to become a bonafide traveller, a man must have journeyed three miles from the place where he slept on the previous night. Twenty or thirty years ago, offenses against the licensing acts were more frequent than they are to-day. An offense which is proved is endorsed on the license of the public house, and three endorse ments may lead to the withdrawal of the license. As a license now-a-days adds any where from £300 to £5000 to the value of a house, and is correspondingly difficult to obtain, public-house keepers are increasingly careful not to transgress the licensing laws. The rural policeman's greatest activity is in connection with the highway laws. He has always been alert in the enforcement of
